compiled by Naomi Darvell
(7/19/00)

We asked staff and friends for their best erotic recipes, then sat back and dreamily awaited romantic, rare, etherial treats: seafood, precious fruits, rosewater ices.

Instead, people sent an amazingly robust array of dishes, featuring such earthy ingredients as beans, potatoes, eggplant and raisins!

Maybe it all goes to show that sometimes the sexiest thing is what's most basic and closest to home.

Here, from breakfast to dessert, from cakes to curries, are some of our favorite foods.

Morning-After Breakfasts
Kris Bierk

For the first three years of our relationship, my boyfriend and I lived 350 miles apart, so we saw each other about one weekend out of the month. Of course, those weekends were spent in bed about three-quarters of the time, the rest being spent in the shower or foraging for something to eat.

For me, the idea of sex and food will always conjure up memories of emerging disheveled and exhausted into Saturday afternoon sunlight, wandering up towards the Fairmount Bagel Institute in Philly and eating sloppy chocolate chip bagels in the park, or getting banana nut muffins at the now extinct Avenue Deli on the corner of Brighton and Harvard in Boston. I loved morning-after breakfasts and sitting at a table in the window, sipping orange juice and sending telepathic signals to passers-by, "Bet you can't guess what we just did for the last ten hours?"

Now we live together and have to spend time doing things like laundry and balancing checkbooks, so we can't be in bed quite as often. But a morning-after breakfast is still our favorite meal. Here are three of our usuals, nothing fancy, but ideally you won't have the energy for anything complicated anyway.

For best results, do not get out of bed before 11 AM, do not brush your teeth or your hair, wear his pajama pants and have him wear your T-shirt, and don't make the bed just yet.

Kel's Aunt Ida's Banana Bread

We're especially good at this one because of our tendency to buy way more produce at one time than we need, so we have mushy bananas on hand often.

1 scant cup sugar
1/4 cup melted butter
1 egg
2 cups flour
a pinch of salt
3 smooshy bananas, mashed

Mix it all together and bake in a loaf pan for about an hour at 350.

Monkey Bread

My boyfriend, with his messy hair and big mountain man beard, has earned the nickname of Monkey. We get a kick out of dwelling on that whenever we make this -- much to the chagrin of anyone unlucky enough to witness our unbearable sappiness.

4 cans of Pillsbury buttermilk biscuits, cut into quarters
1/2 cup sugar
1/3 cup brown sugar

and

3/4 cup melted butter
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar

For the cake: Put the sugars into a big plastic bag and shake it up a bit. Start adding handfuls at a time of the biscuit pieces and shake them around too. Put the coated bits into a greased bundt pan.

For the sauce: Melt everything together in a small sauce pan and stir until it's pretty thick. Pour it over the biscuit pieces and bake the whole thing for 30 minutes at 350.

Crépes

You know that stereotype about guys and outdoor grills? That applies to us in the realm of pancakes and crépes. I have no problem with this, since it means I get to eat more of the crépes than he does, because he's too busy making them.

1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup lukewarm water
2 eggs
2 tbsp melted butter
1 1/2 tbsp sugar
pinch of salt

Mix all the ingredients in a blender until very smooth. It works best if you put the blender pitcher in the refrigerator for a little while before making them, but it's not mandatory. Use a very hot skillet and keep it sprayed with Pam; use about a 1/4 cup of the batter at a time and wiggle the skillet around so that the batter thinly covers the entire bottom. When it starts getting brown and slightly papery at the edges, nudge it up with a spatula and flip it with your fingers.

The best toppings are Nutella, lemon or orange squeezed over raw sugar, or strawberry jelly. Maple syrup is always good. Smear all the toppings on that you want, and then roll it up and go.

Eggplant Caponata
Michele

When I was growing up in Brooklyn, third-generation Italian-American, my grandpa grew his own vegetables and herbs in his backyard garden. He had two fantastic fig trees, which he lovingly covered with homesewn canvas covers before the first frost each year.

We always had an abundance of cucumbers, fresh, sweet tomatoes, basil and mint leaves. Grandma canned the tomatoes each summer, so that she could make her fabulous, homemade sauce every Sunday all year long. Grandpa even had a wine press in the cellar, although the New York climate was not conducive to growing grapes, which he bought wholesale in crates. I can remember each summer eating sliced, fresh peaches soaked in homemade wine, and Grandma letting us kids have a small shot of vino to color our 7-Up!

As for vegetables, though, I always loved the eggplant best. Is there anything as seductive as a custardy moussaka or a garlicky eggplant parmesan? Caponata appetizer, served at room temperature on fresh garlic bread with a glass of wine, makes a perfect, light summer supper. It costs a fortune in those tiny little cans in the gourmet stores, but it is really just diced eggplant, onion, celery, and lots of minced garlic, sauteed in olive oil with some tomato paste and capers.

Grandma always taught me to look for the "male" eggplant (the elongated, tapered ones) rather than the more stodgy, pear-shaped "female" ones. She claimed the male eggplant was sweeter and had fewer seeds inside. To this day, I find myself picking through the eggplant at the produce stand looking for the more elusive "male!" And the perfectly shaped eggplant must also be firm skinned and shiny, with that wonderful aubergine color.

We are all a good deal more fat and calorie conscious than we were back then, and I try to adapt our favorite dishes to a more healthful way of eating. Last weekend, I sauteed a diced eggplant (including the skin), chopped onion, fresh sliced mushrooms, lots of garlic, and a few sliced artichoke hearts in olive oil until tender, then added a can of drained, crushed tomatoes (not puree) and some basil, and let it simmer, covered, for about a half hour. Served over a pound of penne pasta with a sprinkle of Parmesan cheese and freshly ground pepper, it was a perfect, quick summer dinner.

When you want to throw caloric caution to the winds, pared and thinly sliced eggplant, dipped in beaten egg and breadcrumbs, fried in olive oil, then layered in a casserole with homemade marinara sauce, Parmesan and shredded, milky mozzarella cheese (the kind you buy freshly made in Italian specialty stores) and baked until bubbly is too delicious for words. Even better reheated the next day, served between slices of crusty Italian peasant bread.

My favorite eggplant anecdote: My husband's grandmother, God rest her soul, was a feisty, outspoken old lady, in contrast to my soft-spoken grandma.

One New Year's Eve I sat at her kitchen table nursing one of my twin girls, who was then around ten months old. Mark's grandmother pointed her finger at me and warned darkly, "You remind me of my sister-in-law Tessie. She nursed her son past a year old, and her tits looked like eggplants!"

Well, my twin girls nursed past their second birthday, and even now, 15 years later, my tits look pretty damn good. Not like eggplants at all.

No offense to the eggplant, of course.

Caponata

2 tbsp olive oil (or more, if you don't care about calories)
4 tbsp finely minced garlic (I use the kind in the jar for convenience)
1 medium white onion, finely diced
2 large stalks celery, finely diced
1 medium egglant, diced, including skin (a male one, of course!)
Pitted black olives, chopped (about half of a large can)
1 small can tomato paste
Salt and basil to taste

Saute all the veggies, cover tightly and steam for about a half hour until tender. Stir in olives and saute briefly, then stir in the tomato paste, salt and basil. Stir constantly until a bit sizzly.

It's really good if you stir in a bit more olive oil before eating, again if you don't care about the extra fat. I had some tonight on warm whole wheat pita bread and it was really delicious.

Potato-Cheese Soup
Susannah Indigo

I keep a list of things in this world that are better than sex. There aren't too many things on it, but some of them are edible. My grandmother's homemade noodles cooked in chicken fat like all good early 20th century food, the better to satiate you into a deep post-orgasmic-like stupor. An appetizer called b'stella that includes diced Cornish hens, eggs, saffron and powdered sugar so delectably combined that when you finish devouring it with your hands and lick the powdered sugar from your partner's fingers, you're sure you just had great sex. Fresh strawberries dipped in white chocolate. Pasta primavera capellini cooked by your lover who has spent all afternoon finding and chopping only the freshest vegetables, then feeding it to you slowly, bite by bite, while you sit on his lap.

Another: the best potato-cheese soup in the world is a breeze to make, and people who thought they didn't even like potato-cheese soup will fall madly in lust with you if you casually serve this with fresh bread from the bakery and good wine.

Potato-Cheese Soup

1/2 stick butter
4 oz. cream cheese
1/2 cup onions
1 1/2 cups milk or cream
1 minced garlic clove
1 cup cheddar cheese
2 large potatoes, peeled & chopped
parsley for garnish
1 large carrot, chopped
3 cups vegetable broth (canned is fine)
1 teaspoon dill

Saute onions and garlic in butter. Add potatoes and carrots & saute 10 minutes longer. Add the vegetable broth & dill & simmer until all the veggies are tender.(about 30 -- 45 minutes, leaving time for at least a hundred kisses while waiting). Puree the veggies with the cream cheese and milk in the blender and return to the soup pot. Season with salt & pepper. Stir in the cheddar cheese and reheat gently. Garnish with parsley. (Serves 4 -- 6)

Vegetarian Heavy Beef Hot Dog Medley Surprise
Morrigan Tait
(Written as if my boyfriend were writing this recipe.)

1 Bag Mixed Dried Beans
1 Medium Yellow Onion
3-5 Cloves Fresh Garlic
1 Tbs Butter
5 Medium Carrots
1 Large Can Stewed Tomatoes
1 Can Sweet-Corn
3 Tbs Balsamic Vinegar
36 Oz (3 Cans) Prepared Vegetable Broth
36 Oz Water for Cooking
1 Tsp Celery Seed or Beau Monde
1/2 Tsp Powdered Oregano
3 Bay Leaves
Pepper to taste
Salt to taste
Green Tabasco, several dashes to taste
Water to Soak

Take a bag of cheap mixed dried beans from the store and soak them in water overnight. (Hambeens 15 bean soup mix is good.) Get up to check on them often because your girlfriend's tooth grinding is keeping you up anyway. Let them soak all the next day while she makes you look at fabric and antiques. Buy and mail the USPS Money Order for that weird guitar she helped you find on e-Bay. Come home -- hungry. Make some cheese bread for a snack because you still have 3 hours to go with this soup.

Pour off the water that beans soaked in because it's supposed to wash away some of the stuff that causes the winds. Use that old enamel colander that she bought at a yard sale for 5 cents when she was still married to that other guy -- who is universally referred to as "The Dirtbag" by anyone who knew him. Drain and rinse beans with cold water.

Mince onion and garlic. I reckon you can do this by hand, but we have a White-Westinghouse mini-chopper. In large stockpot fry garlic and onion over medium-high heat until light brown. Add soaked beans back in, and add broth and water. It's easy when you use one of the empty broth cans to measure the water -- 3 cans broth, 3 cans water. Stir and add bay leaves and dash of salt.

Over high-heat, stir occasionally until it comes to a boil. (boil-pronounced "bole"). Put lid on pot. Reduce heat to medium. Set timer for 1-1/2 hours. Clean up yer mess. Peel and slice carrots. Clean up yer mess again.

Scrub your hands and go make love. Watch some of the Hockey game and part of an old Rockford Files episode. Why does he call his dad "Rocky" and not Dad?

When timer goes off, check beans. If they look like they're getting close to mushy enough to eat, add carrots, corn and seasonings. Open can of tomatoes and, using your bare hands, squish them up and drop them right into the pot. (Now don't you feel manly?) Stir, and boil (bole) on stove with lid on for another 1/2 hour or until beans are squishy enough to eat. While yer waiting clean up yer mess, make a green salad and refrigerated buttermilk biscuits or more cheese bread. Set the table when Antiques Roadshow comes on TV, and call her in for supper.

After supper watch her move around the kitchen as she clears the dishes. (Couldn't you just pounce on her right now?) When that's all done get dressed and go down to Linda's Doll-Hut for a couple of pints of Guinness and listen to a bad punk band named after a toilet manufacturer. Make sure she brought some soup to your friend's girlfriend, and when she asks what it is, make up something funny to call it (like Vegetarian Heavy Beef Hot Dog Medley Surprise) while your girlfriend interjects and says "It's just a thick bean soup. It's really good." Let her drive home because all she's had is Diet Coke and bottled water. Make love. Go to sleep.

Sri Lankan Potato Curry
Mary Anne Mohanraj

What could be a sexier food than curry? Nothing, of course. Good to eat before during and after sex; good finger food, naturally. Tired of whipped cream -- think it's too sweet? Slather a little curry on your partner and lick that off! And hey, it's vegan too, so it's good for you!

Sri Lankan Potato Curry

3 small yellow onions, chopped
1 T vegetable oil
two pinches black mustard seed
two pinches cumin seed
1 T (or more to taste) red or brown curry powder (buy in Indian stores -- you can make this with yellow but it'll taste very different)
3 medium baking potatoes, cubed
2 tomatoes, chopped (can substitute 3 T ketchup (my mom does))
1/2 c. milk, optional

1.Fry onions 1st four ingredients till onions are translucent.


2.Add red curry powder and cook till you start to cough (if you manage to find brown curry powder, you can simply add it with the potatoes in the next step; the red powder is raw and needs to be cooked first).


3.Add potatoes and tomatoes and cook covered on medium high (add water, as necessary, to prevent burning)


4.When potatoes are cooked through, serve (or add milk, stir, and serve).

NOTE:
1. You can vary it a lot by adding cinnamon, cardamom, cloves to the onions, a dash of worcestershire sauce with the ketchup, some lemon juice, coconut milk instead of regular, etc.


2. One of my partners prefers his all mushed up with a fork --which gave me the idea of pureeing this in a blender. It makes a great dip -- serve it with triangles of toasted pita bread.


**Highly recommended for Sri Lankan and other recipes: The Complete Asian Cookbook, by Charmaine Solomon.

Gwydion's Aphrodisiacal Teriyaki Tri-Tip
Gwydion McCarthy

Once I visited a lover of mine in California, we'll call her Ariel. She was part of some hybrid weight-loss program at the time, and I had made the mistake of not eating very much before hopping on the plane for the trip from New York to LA. The food on the plane was fairly disgusting and because of time constraints (and her diet), lunch was not truly forthcoming upon my arrival.

What followed (a trip to Disneyland to see the fireworks, then back to her apartment to feel the fireworks) was classic Pavlovian conditioning. Here I am, getting teased mercilessly (or was that mercifully?) whilst she stops every five minutes to go and brush Mr. Yoshida's gourmet sauce onto a haunch of tri-tip beef that was slow-grilling on the barbie. Blindfolds, feathers on nipples, tastes of her on her fingertips... and that momentary interruption every five minutes, that smell of Mr. Yoshida blending with the meat and the juices, and my unrelenting hunger (both kinds of hunger) now a palpable force.

Six hours after I arrive in LA, I finally bite into a piece of her... I mean, a piece of the tri-tip, followed quickly by releases of other kinds of passion (Maslow knows what he's talking about). I suppose she rationalized that the energy expended during the sex was more than enough to make up for the beef she ate.

Now I feel amazingly aroused in certain sections of the grocery aisle, at Japanese restaurants, at the food court in the mall. Anywhere you can get that teriyaki flavor, which is now inextricably linked in my mind with powerful, delayed-gratification sex.

My recipe is very simple -- marinate any beef cut with Mr. Yoshida's sauce, then cook slowly. Toward the end of the cooking process, baste with more sauce. Domo Arigato, Mr. Yoshida!

Vanilla Extract
Naomi Darvell

I find it odd when people speak dismissively of "vanilla sex," meaning sex with no kinks, no twists, no imagination. Maybe they have only tasted the cloying sugariness of artificial vanilla -- not real vanilla in all its flowery, perfumelike glory.

"Vanilla." You can taste it on your tongue as you say it. The name comes from the Latin "vagina" through the Spanish "vainilla" which means "little sheath" or "little seed pod." Let's not forget that the vanilla bean is the sexual organ of the vanilla orchid.

I have one of these fragrant little pods in front of me as I write. Occasionally I pick it up, rub it, inhale its luxuriant scent. It leaves a sticky oil on my fingertips.

In Mexico, where vanilla originated, people keep vanilla beans in their linen cabinets. They consider the scent on their sheets and pillowcases an aphrodisiac! (See the Vanilla, Saffron Imports Website for this and other delicious facts.)

One usually thinks of vanilla as an ornament to rich desserts, though some cooks use it to lend an exotic layer of flavor to seafood. In scant amounts, it adds a lovely heady element to coffee and tea.

Always use the highest quality vanilla you can find. Best of all: get some whole beans and make your own vanilla extract.

Choose dark, moist, supple beans. Get small (4 or at most 6 ounce) glass bottles, tinted brown if possible. Use 2 beans per bottle. Chop one bean and put it into its bottle along with the whole one.

I use the whole bean mainly because it looks so nice floating dimly visible through the colored glass. I slit the pod gently all up and down to release the seeds, which carry much of the flavor. (Be sure you get all the seeds from the chopped bean into the bottle too.)

Fill the bottles with a nice cognac. Some people, finding the flavor of cognac too strong, use vodka instead. To me, vodka tastes harsh, medicinal and not sweet enough to make an ideal matrix for vanilla. Light rum might be a better substitute.

Put your vanilla away in a dark place for at least six months. (Long-term commitment time, folks.) Don't touch it. Don't even look at it. Otherwise you'll be tempted to unscrew the cap and sniff. Before long you'll be committing the unspeakable sin of premature gratification. If you give the vanilla as a gift, by all means wait until it has aged properly. The first thing your friends will do is open it, take a long, ecstatic breath, then stick their fingers in for a taste. You don't want this happening until the vanilla has entirely given up its scent into the liquor.

The first time, enjoy your homemade vanilla in something simple. I make vanilla ice cream with real cream. When pouring in the extract I try to include as many of the flavorful seeds as possible.

I don't overwhelm vanilla ice cream with chocolate or caramel. At most, I serve it with fruit (raspberries, mangoes) and a glass of champagne.

After sharing a dessert like that, take another glass of champagne and slip between (why not?) vanilla-scented sheets for an evening of whatever flavor sex you prefer.

Food to Die For
Bill Noble

In my youth (as people my age say), I was a farmer in Nova Scotia, leaping naked into our lake every summer's morning, threshing grain communally with my neighbors, plowing with an ox team, and making the best damned cider in Lunenburg County. Dinner on threshing days climaxed with one whole pie per man or boy -- and that after a groaning hour-long frenzy of pot roast and gravy, potato mountains, and slabs of steaming bread slathered with butter. After, I made my way painfully up our road toward home under the soft, huge-vaulted northern twilight; sex, even if I'd been capable of it those nights, would have been an anti-climax.

Two recipes from that time still trigger voluptuous surges and trembling passion in my soul (and elsewhere). Both of them are from one of the great cookbooks of the Western World, the Mennonite Community Cookbook. Between the butter-yellow, hand-painted covers of this book are the glorious rural foods of the North American Abundance, mixed with equally glorious German and Russian treasures. Eat at your peril!

Apple Sponge

Simply astonishing, and a great way to prepare for by-pass surgery. This is an ancient recipe, pre-Mennonite, going back at least to colonial days in North America. Do what you can to resist the urge to bury your frenzied face in its warm, creamy body.

6 apples
2 eggs, separated
1 cup sugar
1 cup flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup water
1 tsp vanilla
1 tbs butter
2 cups brown sugar

Pare and slice the apples.

For the batter, beat the egg yolks and add the sugar to them. Sift the dry ingredients together and add to the yolks alternately with the water and flavoring. Fold in the egg whites, beaten stiff.

Melt butter and brown sugar in the bottom of a large, flat baking dish. Add the apples and pour the batter over them. Bake at 350 for 45 minutes.

Turn out upside-down to serve. Pour whole, fresh cream over your portion. Eat.

Rochester Cake

Another several-centuries-old recipe. No other cake of any kind (except possibly chocolate) ever needs to be baked. Compelled or distracted by lust? Forget the cake altogether and spread the blood-warm, mucosal, fruity droozle over your lover and devour the two delights as one.

The Cake

1/2 cup shortening
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 eggs
3 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp soda
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp cloves
1 tsp nutmeg
1 1/2 cups sour milk

Cream the shortening, add the sugar and beat fluffy. Add eggs and beat thoroughly.

Sift the flour, measure and add salt, soda and spices; sift again.

Add the dry ingedients to the shortening alternately with the sour milk, beating as you go.

Bake in greased layer pans at 350 for 30 minutes.

The Topping

1 cup sugar
3 tbs butter
1 1/2 tbs cornstarch
1 cup raisins
1 1/3 cup water

Combine cornstarch and sugar. Add the water and raisins. Cook in a double boiler until thick and clear. Remove from the heat and add butter. Droozle over each layer of the cake, stack the layers and droozle some more, until the cake dish threatens to overflow. When your lover isn't looking, lick the pan clean. Use your fingers. Use your whole face.

The Mennonite Community Cookbook, originally published in 1950, is still in print half a century later. It's published by Herald Press in Scottdale PA and Kitchener ONT.